Machiavelli

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Machiavelli

• The Prince

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Machiavellis The Prince

• Historical Overview
• Human Nature and Power
• Fortune Virtue
• Forms of Government

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I. Historical Overview

• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 1527)
• European Renaissance
• Declining power of Church
• Advancing in Science, Arts, Literature
• The Prince written in 1513 during period of
  political exile

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Copernican Universe
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I. Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Medici family rules city
• French forces invade, set up republican
  government
• Machiavelli gets role in government, ends up as
  high civil servant, some diplomatic missions and
  military operations

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I. Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Spanish defeat the French, and reinstall the
  Medici
• Machiavelli is arrested, tortured, and eventually
  exiled to his country home beyond the city walls
• During this period (hes in his 40s) he begins
  his philosophical/political writing, including
  The Prince

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I. Historical Overview

• Machiavelli Florence
• Prince is dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici, the
  Magnificent
• But this Medici is the grandson of the founder of
  the Medici dynasty, Lorenzo il Magnifico, the
  genuine Lorenzo the Magnificent

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Machiavelli Florence

• The Prince as extended job application?
• Two aims
• Secure a government job
• Provide recipe for stabilizing Italian city
  states to protect them from outside interference,
  whether civil or ecclesiastical

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II. Human Nature and Power

• The desire to acquire is truly a very natural
  and common thing and whenever men who can, do
  so, they are praised and not condemned but when
  they cannot and want to do so just the same,
  herein lies the mistake and the condemnation.
  (Chapter 3).

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Contrast with Greeks/Aquinas
• Implications?
• Human beings are selfish animals
• Need to construct a political life which is based
  on how people actually behave, not how we want
  them to be
• But

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Doesnt want to reject either rational politics
  (the Greeks) or religious salvation (the church)
  out of hand
• Rather, the goals of these two projects must come
  not from directives by external sources but
  through personal choices

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II. Human Nature and Power

• These personal choices will only come about if
  and when we appreciate the factors that motivate
  people in making their choices
• Each individual is fully responsible for his/her
  choices
• Each of us share this responsibility since we
  each share the same human nature

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Power
• Machiavelli the first political thinker to focus
  on power as positive trait
• Simple recognition of the fact that the quest for
  power is an essential part of human nature
• Why?

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II. Human Nature and Power

• If we want to acquire possessions, then that
  implies that we also want the means to acquire
  those possessions
• Need to recognize that for rulers the study of
  power is vital how to acquire it, how to keep
  it, how to use it

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Many writers have imagined for themselves
  republics and principalities that have never been
  seen nor known to exist in reality for there is
  such a gap between how one lives and how one
  ought to live that anyone who abandons what is
  done for what ought to be done learns his ruin
  rather than his preservation (chapter 15)

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II. Human Nature and Power

• for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all
  times will come to ruin among so many who are not
  good (chapter 15).

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Indeed, Machiavelli asserts
• For one can generally say this about men they
  are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers,
  avoiders of danger, greedy for gain and while
  you work for their good they are completely
  yours, offering you their blood, their property,
  their lives, and their sons, as I said earlier,
  when danger is far away but when it comes nearer
  to you they turn away (chapter XVII).

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II. Human Nature and Power

• So if a Prince or ruler wants to stay in power,
  he must
• Learn how not to be good, and to use this
  knowledge or not to use it according to
  necessity (chapter XV)

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II. Human Nature and Power

• What does this mean?
• Machiavelli is not advising us to behave badly
  simply for the sake of being evil

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Rather since we see power in political life we
  need to counsel rulers on how best to use it
• Basic advice, dont help others, be cruel,
  stingy, deceptive
• And get others to do the dirty work so you can
  escape blame

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II. Human Nature and Power

• You must, therefore, know that there are two
  means of fighting one according to the laws,
  the other with force the first way is proper to
  man, the second to beasts but because the first,
  in many cases is not sufficient, it becomes
  necessary to have recourse to the second
  (chapter XVIII).

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II. Human Nature and Power
Since, then, a prince must know how to make good
use of the nature of the beast, he should choose
from among the beasts the

• fox and the lion for the lion cannot defend
  itself from traps and the fox cannot protect
  itself from wolves. It is therefore necessary to
  be a fox in order to recognize the traps and a
  lion in order to frighten the wolves.

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Examples?
• Chapter VII
• Cesare Borgia acquired the state through the
  favour and help of his father, and when this no
  longer existed, he lost it, and this despite the
  fact that he did everything and used every means
  that a prudent and skilful man ought to use in
  order to root himself securely in those states
  that the arms and fortune of others had granted
  him

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Background here
• Cesares father? Pope Alexander VI
• The Pope put Cesare in charge of Florence, and
  issued a formal papal bull (order) authorizing
  him to expand the power of Florence
• What were some of the means used by this
  prudent and skilful man?

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Later in the chapter we get one example
• Borgia takes over Romagna, but is meeting
  resistance since it was ruled by powerless
  noblemen who had been quicker to despoil their
  subjects than to govern them, and gave them cause
  to disunite rather than to unite them

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II. Human Nature and Power

• He decided it was necessary to bring peace and
  obedience of the law and installed a man named
  Remirro de Orca, a cruel and efficient man to
  rule
• Then, after the area was pacified, Borgia does
  the following

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Since he knew that the severities of the past
  had brought about a certain amount of hate, in
  order to purge the minds of those people and win
  them over completely, he planned to demonstrate
  that if cruelty of any kind had come about, it
  did not stem from him Borgia but rather from
  the bitter nature of the minister

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II. Human Nature and Power

• And having found the occasion to do this, he had
  him placed one morning in Cesena on the piazza in
  two pieces with a piece of wood and a
  bloodstained knife alongside him.

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II. Human Nature and Power

• The atrocity of such a spectacle left those
  people at one and the same time satisfied and
  stupefied.

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Story of Agathocles the Sicilian (chapter VIII)
• Story of Oliverotto of Fermo (chapter VII)
• Footnote
• A year after the events described here (1512),
  Cesare had Fermo strangled and the corpse
  displayed on the main square of Senigallia for 3
  days

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Conclusion?
• In taking a state its conqueror should weigh all
  the harmful things he must do and do them all at
  once so as not to have to repeat them every day,
  and in not repeating them to be able to make men
  feel secure and win them over with the benefits
  he bestows upon them

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Machiavelli is not counseling the need to be
  cruel, nor denying that cruelty is sometimes
  useful, but rather showing how to limit its worst
  effects
• The primary requirement for selfish individuals
  seeking personal goals is to enter into
  reciprocal relationships where each needs power
  or influence over the behavior of others

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II. Human Nature and Power

• In entering these relationships, all are equal in
  their selfishness, and all are free to seek power
• Hes not saying that people will never act on the
  common good, only that they will do so only if
  they see an identity between their private
  interest and the common good

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II. Human Nature and Power

• Those who appear good or altruistic to others are
  either rational actors really motivated by desire
  for personal advantage, or ruled by laziness and
  retreating from their political responsibilities

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II. Human Nature and Power

• And it is essential to understand this that a
  prince, and especially a new prince, cannot
  observe all those things for which men are
  considered good, for in order to maintain the
  state he is often obliged to act against his
  promise, against charity, against humanity, and
  against religion

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II. Human Nature and Power

• And therefore, it is necessary that he have a
  mind ready to turn itself according to the way
  the winds of fortune and the changeability of
  affairs require him and, as I said above, as
  long as it is possible, he should not stray from
  the good, but he should know how to enter into
  evil when necessity commands (Chapter XVIII).

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• But what happens if you follow Machiavellis
  principles?
• Is success guaranteed
• Recall the passage about Cesare Borgia, the model
  for much of Machiavellis discussion

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III. Fortune and Virtue
Cesare Borgia acquired the state through the
favour and help of his father, and when this no
longer existed, he lost it, and this despite the
fact that he did everything and used every means
that a prudent and skilful man ought to use in
order to root himself securely in those states
that the arms and fortune of others had granted
him (emphasis added)
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III. Fortune and Virtue

• Machiavelli recognizes that sometimes, despite
  the best planning, education, and skill, events
  still turn out badly
• That is, fortune or luck is also a part of our
  political life

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• Chapter XXV
• I judge it to be true that fortune is the
  arbiter of one half of our actions, but that she
  still leaves the control of the other half, or
  almost that, to us.
• Flooding river analogy

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• What to do?
• Follow Machiavellis prescriptions. That is,
  learn the virtues of ruling
• I also believe that the man who adapts his
  course of action to the nature of the times will
  succeed and, likewise, that the man who sets his
  course of action out of tune with the times will
  come to grief (XVIII).

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• In other words, a good ruler is one who can adapt
  to changing circumstances
• It means knowing when to be cautious and
  hesitant, or bold and forceful, as the occasion
  demands.

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• Knowing what to do and when to do it is part of
  Machiavellis understanding of virtue
• Unlike the ancient philosophers or Christian
  theologians, virtue is divorced from the idea of
  a code of conduct, of good versus bad ways of
  acting

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• Instead, for Machiavelli, virtue is
  individualistic contra the Greeks and Romans
  and secular contra the Church
• Not some idealistic merit or moral goodness, but
  

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• A true selfishness that enables individuals to
  get what they value, whether power, wealth, fame,
  etc.
• Those who get what they seek have demonstrated
  their virtue and they are judged, in
  Machiavellis criteria, as good.
• By adapting by adjusting cunning and strength,
  by following the fox and the lion a virtuous
  ruler is one who can see trouble on the horizon
  (the work of fortune) and act rather than be
  taken off-guard by changing events

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III. Fortune and Virtue

• Because a political state is passive (events
  happen to it), it needs constant attention
  devoted to creating order and avoiding disorder

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IV. Forms of Government

• What is the best way to maintain the state?
• What is the best form of government?
• What are the basic forms of government?

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IV. Forms of Government

• Unlike Aristotle, Machiavelli argues that
  basically we have two forms
• Republic
• Monarchy
• All the states, all the dominions that have had
  and still have power over men, were and still are
  either republics or principalities (first
  sentence, Chapter 1)

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IV. Forms of Government

• But throughout The Prince, that distinction blurs
  a bit, with monarchies or civic principalities
  ending up looking very similar to republics
• The real distinction is then between republics
  and tyrannies (i.e., those monarchies or
  principalities which differ from republics).

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IV. Forms of Government

• Republics
• Founded by a strong, inspirational leader
  rallying the citizenry
• Based on law
• Governed in the interest of the majority, not of
  a special elite
• Mixed class members of all classes have
  opportunity to participate

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IV. Forms of Government

• Note, republics require a special citizenry
  active, engaged, public spirited
• Unlikely to have those conditions in every area,
  so tyranny is inevitable

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IV. Forms of Government

• Tyrannies
• Masses are subjects, not active participants in
  political life
• Ruling classes enjoy more liberty, and when
  interests of rulers conflict with liberty of the
  masses, the rulers prevail

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IV. Forms of Government

• The masses are content with this arrangement
  since they recognize that without the ruler,
  anarchy would ensue, or
• Theyre content because they are either fearful
  or awestruck of the powers that be

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IV. Forms of Government

• Lacking the virtue of citizens in a republic, the
  masses under tyrannical regimes both merit and
  need tyranny
• And when a tyrant is stuck governing a bunch of
  corrupt, vulgar masses who lack virtue, then
  ordinary morality is not binding and he/she/they
  can pretty much do what they must to stay in power

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